Footnotes
by lucindadixon
Summary: A series of unrelated Bill/Laura ficlets
1. Chapter 1

This is a series of unrelated Bill/Laura ficlets that I'm posting together as they aren't really long enough to qualify as stand-alone stories. There may or may not be more. I hope you enjoy :)

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Blankets twist uncomfortably around her legs as she thrashes from one end of her cot to the other, trying and failing to avoid the sun glaring in on her from the cracks around the flap of her tent. The light hurts her head, but that's only the beginning of why sleep eludes her despite her fatigue and lingering hangover. Her mind whirrs like the generators operating this sad excuse for a settlement, whirrs and stutters and fails to illuminate much of anything.

Giving up on sleep for the time being, Laura struggles from her bed, rubbing grit from her eyes and wrapping her thin blanket about her shoulders. She finds a carafe of water on the rickety hand-hewn table that doubles as her desk and pours a generous amount into a coffee mug, drinking it back in several gulps.

The water is warm and slightly gritty, like everything else on this godsforsaken planet, but it helps clear away some of the unpleasant morning-after taste from her palate. If anything, she feels worse now than the first time she woke that morning. At least then she had a set of strong arms wrapped around her and soft lips brushing against her shoulder. His presence had shielded her, both from the weak early morning light, and from the doubts that had begun to seep in moments after they rose.

Missteps are so easily made when one allows oneself to overindulge in the pleasures of drink and smoke and companionship. She'll recover from most of her excesses given time and sleep. She doesn't know if she'll ever recover from Bill. But then, she knew that already, long before today.

Setting down her mug, she picks up her journal and pen and returns to her cot. Leaving the book unopened in her lap, she rolls the pen against her lips as she remembers.

She was still slightly inebriated when they awoke after a scant hour or two of sleep, crammed into her tiny cot like sardines. What could have been uncomfortably close quarters for two people who had flirted with, but had not yet crossed that final line, somehow were not and she sighed as his hands skimmed lightly across areas already touched but not yet seen

Now, goosebumps rise on her bare arms as she remembers laughing softly until he opened an eye to observe her mirth.

"Something funny, Laura?" he rumbled in her ear.

Nothing was remotely humorous about the kiss she gave him in response, all breathless inhalations, racing hearts and seeking hands under the covers.

Opening the book in her lap, she writes. _Everything is different now._

Deliberately, she draws a line under her words and closes the book again. Prosperity doesn't need the details. Setting it aside, she lays back down, straightening her blanket to cover her.

"I have to go," he said afterwards. "I'm sorry; I wish I didn't."

She should have kissed him goodbye then and there, let him leave with the romance still hovering over them like smoke. She could have gone back to sleep still feeling him all around her, inside her, safe from bitter reality for a few more hours.

Instead she saw him out, watched him slowly reabsorbed back into his world, a world that is no longer hers, if it ever truly was.

There was no kiss goodbye.

She closes her eyes again and rolls away from the light, one arm against her forehead shielding her eyes, the other across her stomach. If she only she could find sleep. Her fingers flex beneath the blanket, wandering up from her belly to graze her breast.

If she could sleep, she could dream.

Sometime later, she wakes to a warm, heavy hand on hers.

"Laura."

Her eyes drift open to find him kneeling beside her. The sun has moved to the other side of her tent and his face is in shadow, but she knows he's smiling.

"You came back," she sighs, turning her hand over in his and lacing their fingers together.

"I'll always come back."


	2. Chapter 2

Several long hours pass between receiving confirmation of her rescue from New Caprica and the moment he can wait no longer to see her. He doesn't even speak to her by comm, partly by happenstance, partly by design. Stupid, romantic notions that their reunion should take place in person float through his mind and are waved aside, again and again, as one crisis after another demands his attention.

His need to verify with his own eyes that she is alive and uninjured grows stronger by the second until at last it overtakes even his overdeveloped sense of duty. Leaving Helo in charge of CIC, he boards a Raptor ferrying supplies to Colonial One, his thin, nonsensical excuse for needing to meet with the former president goes unquestioned by his exhausted XO and unexplained to his pilot.

He encounters Tory first, seated amongst the chaos of Laura's former office, and prepares himself for an argument with the overprotective aide. None materialises; the young woman simply inclines her head towards the curtain with something that might have been a smile had it not been so weighted down with fatigue. "She's in there."

He nods and passes by, and turning back when he's several steps past. "It's good to see you, Tory."

"Thank you, sir." Her eyes drop back down to the pages in front of her. "It's good to be seen."

Bill nods again, noticing for the first time, several sleeping strangers scattered around the room. It's going to be a long time before things return to any sort of normal. But they're alive. Laura is alive. He proceeds back to her curtained off living space and taps on the bulkhead beside her doorway.

"Come in, Tory," she calls out, and he nearly topples over in relief at the sound of that voice, tired and rough, but unmistakeably Laura.

He clears his throat. "It's not Tory," he advises without entering, fair warning in case she wants to withdraw the invitation.

"Bill?" His name is a question, spoken barely above a whisper, but it's enough to finally propel him forward. He finds her standing in the middle of the small room, eyes shiny with tears and her hand pressed tightly to her mouth. She's dressed in baggy, tattered clothing he's never seen, her hair a windswept jumble, but to his war-weary eyes, she's never looked more beautiful.

"I won't stay long. I just had to see you," he says, voice catching halfway though. He can't, won't, look away from her, afraid that if he does she'll somehow disappear and he'll find himself alone in his rack on Galactica, this reunion a dream, like all the others that have haunted his nights since he was forced to leave her to the Cylons.

She's still staring at him as if she's not entirely sure of his corporeality either. Then her hand comes away from her face and reaches out to him. He grasps it and before he's even aware of it happening, she's wrapped up in his arms.

He doesn't know how long they stand there like that, holding each other so tightly that later he worries he may have hurt her. She's so thin now, her physical delicacy at odds with the steel he knows is inside her. She doesn't complain though, and she's squeezing him just as vehemently, whispering words of relief and gratitude into the curve where his neck meets his shoulder.

"No," he says, shaking his head against hers, "Don't thank me. I'm the one that left you there. Laura, I…"

"Bill. Stop it." She pulls back, just enough to look him in the eyes. "You had no choice. This wasn't your fault, any more than it was mine for not going through with rigging the election. We can't waste our energy second-guessing ourselves. We have to look forward; there's not going to be time for anything else."

She's right, of course. And hearing her say the words, more than anything, makes him believe, if not in his own actions, then in her ongoing support for him, for the fleet, and for what they need to accomplish, here, together once again.

All that will come soon enough, he decides. For the next few minutes though, he's going to just be thankful she's here.

He tightens his grip once again.


	3. Chapter 3

"Am I supposed to be scared now?"

Bill looks anything but as he stares down the irate redhead standingin front of him. She narrows her eyes at him, a furious half-strangled sputter escaping her compressed lips before she spins around and stalks back to her desk, sitting down abruptly.

Stifling an almost over-whelming urge to laugh, he follows her across the room and takes the visitor's chair opposite her. She's shuffling papers, concentrating intently, as if her life depends upon her getting them into the proper order.

He's seen this before. She's hoping that if she ignores him pointedly enough, eventually he'll get up and leave, giving them both some time to cool off before they can rationally discuss whatever comprises the disagreement of the hour.

Usually, it works.

Not this time.

This time, for all her ranting, he's still not sure why she's even angry with him. The best he can gather is she's had a very bad day and has decided that he will bear the brunt of it.

And that's okay with him. If irrationally yelling in his direction for a while will make any of this even a little bit easier for her, well, he's pretty sure he can take it.

"Laura," he says now.

She stops sorting her papers and looks at him without raising her head, eyes rolling upwards to glare at him over the top of her glasses. He hears her thoughts as easily as if she had spoken them. _Are you still here?_

"You are absolutely, one hundred percent, completely right."

Tilting her head slightly, she watches him for a second. Then she sets her papers down on the desk and swipes her hands across them, flattening them into a messy pile. "Am I?" she asks dangerously, clearly anticipating some sort of trick. "What am I right about, Bill?" She pulls off her glasses and tosses them on the desk in front of her like a gauntlet.

He leans back in his chair, crosses his arms and looks her straight in the eye, his best carved-from-granite Adama glare firmly in place. Quietly, but resolutely, he replies, pausing after every word, as if each comprises its own sentence. "I. Don't. Know."

They stare at each other in a silent standoff, until finally he sees what he's been watching for, an almost imperceptible quirk of her upper lip. And then another. And soon after, a very un-presidential snort of laughter.

Cracks begin to appear in his own stoic façade, first around his eyes, and then his own lips start to twitch upwards. Soon, he's grinning outright, and Laura is actually giggling, her cheeks flushed and the fingers of one hand pressed tightly to her mouth.

"Bill, I'm sorry," she says after a few moments. "You didn't deserve that."

He returns her smile, then looks down to his lap, still grinning at first, but by the time he looks back up at her, all traces of humour are gone. "None of us deserve any of this," he says.

Laura's smile drifts away. "No," she agrees quietly, eyes dropping back to the pile of paperwork in front of her. Her fingers slides along the edges of the top sheet and he glances away when a thin, red line appears on her thumb.

When he looks back, she's sliding her glasses on. "So," she begins, "about the rationing…"


	4. Chapter 4

"Laura, is there something you want to tell me?"

Bill's voice reaches out to her from the direction of thehead, gruffly penetrating the fog that currently comprises her mind.

She looks up quickly from her corner of the couch, panic rising in her throat. He can't possibly know; how could he know? She only found out herself an hour ago. She's not ready for him to know.

That would make it real, and gods, it's far too real already.

"What did you say?" she calls back weakly, as if she hasn't heard him correctly. Perhaps she hasn't. It's that faint hope she clings to. Perhaps she hasn't.

He enters her sightline, her carefully prepared agenda in his hand, picked up from the floor where she must have dropped it in her haste to make it to the head before losing her breakfast.

Item number one – appointment with Dr. Cottle, Galactica life station, the page reads in Tory's sparse handwriting. Item number two – meeting with the Admiral, his quarters. It goes on from there, certainly, but she can't remember it all just now as Bill sets it on the table in front of her.

"You had an appointment with Cottle this morning?" he asks, almost too casually.

"Oh. Yes. Just a check-up." She smiles wanly, picking up the page and folding it in half, then quarters, then eighths. If she can make it small enough, perhaps it will disappear and she'll wake up in her cot, ready to begin a new day, a better day, a day where she doesn't have cancer.

"Nothing I need to know?" he asks again, and she shakes her head no, nothing at all, it's not like I'm dying again or anything.

She's pretty sure he knows she's lying, but he sits down beside her anyway, rough fingers brushing over hers as he gently removes the tiny square of paper from her hand. He unfolds it, smoothing it carefully against his leg.

"All right. Let's see what we have today."


End file.
